


In my dreams we survived

by irisdouglasiana



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, character study I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 06:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26348869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: Men believe that fighting with a sword is a contest of strength and speed and luck,Uhtred tells Hild,but before that, you must master stillness. You must know when to strike and when to wait. This is the first lesson of swordskill and the most important of all.
Relationships: Hild & Iseult, Hild & Uhtred of Bebbanburg
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	In my dreams we survived

**Author's Note:**

> CW: brief, non-graphic references to rape.

When Uhtred places his sword in Hild’s outstretched hands for the first time somewhere in the forests of Cumbraland, she marvels at how heavy it is. She has watched Uhtred swing the same sword many times and make it look as though it weighed nothing; she admired the seamlessness of the illusion. Now he steps back and gazes at her, and she feels the illusion fall away.

Uhtred says, “Men believe that fighting with a sword is a contest of strength and speed and luck—and so it is—but before that, you must master stillness. You must know when to strike and when to wait. This is the first lesson of swordskill and the most important of all.”

He waits and he watches. The wind rustles the leaves and the birds sing overhead and the shadows creep across the forest floor with the sun. The sword grows heavier and heavier in her hands and her muscles begin to tire, and some part of her wonders if he means to keep her standing here throughout the night; if this is another one of his jokes. Still, she looks him in the eye and keeps her grip steady. Patience was the first lesson she was taught as a novice, and Uhtred is very much mistaken if he thinks he can outwait her.

She lets her mind cycle through her catalog of prayers, and when she is finished with that, she travels from Cumbraland back to her girlhood in Wessex, to the days not long after she joined the church, to Wintanceaster before the Danes burst through the gates, to the rolling fields of Ethandun. She takes herself to the moment just before she heard the thundering of hooves and the shrieks of fear as Skorpa and his men bore down on the camp. Iseult is plucking the leaves one by one from the stem of a plant to use for a tonic. She glances at Hild with calm dark eyes, blinks slowly, and smiles.

The lesson is over just as darkness is beginning to fall. Uhtred takes the sword back from her hands and sheaths it and she finally drops her numb arms to her sides. He gives her a nod of approval.

“Hild,” he says, “you may be a nun by choice, but I know a warrior by birth when I see one.”

* * *

In her dreams, she can still see Iseult walking alone into the dark, her back turned to her and her stride resolute. Hild’s mouth goes dry and her voice fails. _Don’t go that way,_ she wants to tell her. _Come back to the fire and warm yourself. Don’t leave me._

Iseult does not turn around. The darkness envelopes her and she is gone.

* * *

The second lesson: to be honorable is well and good, but excessive honor in battle will get you killed. Use whatever weapon you have at hand.

It is wooden swords for now—and though they cannot cut, they certainly can leave a bruise. She comes away from these sessions black and blue, muscles sore, hair plastered to the back of her neck with sweat. Uhtred disarms her with ease over and over again. She learns his tricks soon enough, but she can never seem to outmaneuver him. He feints to draw her in range, and then with a twist of his wrist he sends her sword flying out of her hands and places the edge of his own sword against her neck.

“Yield, mighty warrior Hild,” he says with a grin, and she always does. But it is too warm this midsummer morning and she is irritated both with him for making this into a game and with herself for still failing to beat him at it. If he can play games, so can she.

She turns her head to the side and frowns. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

In the split second that he is distracted, she knocks away his sword with one hand and with the other she grabs a handful of his hair and yanks hard. He yelps in surprise and drops his sword when she gives him a solid kick in the shins. She hastily picks it up and points it in his direction.

“Will my lord yield?” she asks coolly.

“You pulled out my hair, woman,” he complains. But he yields.

Afterwards, they make their way down to the stream to wash away some of the sweat and dirt. She crouches down and splashes water on her face. Beside her—lacking in modesty as ever—Uhtred has already stripped and waded in. He takes a deep breath and submerges himself completely. Hild watches the bubbles rise to the surface for just long enough for her to begin to worry, but then he emerges laughing and she lets out a silent sigh of relief.

“You should join me, fair lady,” he teases. “The water is pleasant, but it would be better with you in it.”

She rolls her eyes. “The lady Gisela,” she says. She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them. “Will you ask for her?”

He wipes the water from his face and considers her for a moment. “I believe I will,” he says at last. “After Iseult, I thought—I thought I would not find joy again. But with Gisela…”

“Iseult would not wish for you to spend your life in mourning.”

“Nor you, Hild.” He sinks down so only his head is above the water and regards her. “It was because of Iseult that you wished to learn swordskill, did you not? You blame yourself for not being able to protect her. But you would have been killed too. It is a hard thing to learn—even with a sword, even with an army at our backs, we cannot save everyone. Even those we love most.”

She looks down and plucks at a loose thread on her sleeve. Uhtred is reckless and cocksure and bold, but he is no fool. And he knows her too well. “I am glad you have found love,” she tells him when she regains her voice. “I wish you nothing but happiness.”

* * *

She wonders how often Iseult had seen her own death: had she recognized Skorpa the first time he stepped into her hall, or in her visions was he always faceless? When Iseult arose just before dawn and carefully untangled herself from Uhtred, did she know that she was to die that day? Or did she walk through her last morning in ignorance, and only in her final moments did she see her vision enact itself?

Hild, mercifully, did not witness it. But she did witness the aftermath.

* * *

“You must understand who your opponent is,” Uhtred tells Hild as they circle each other, wooden swords drawn, autumn leaves crunching under their feet. “In most circumstances, you will have but a few seconds to do so, if you are lucky.”

She prepares to lunge, but Uhtred is already upon her before she can even move. He bats her sword away almost lazily and she backs away. “You tense your muscles before you attack,” he observes. “It shows in your face too. You clench your jaw.”

She takes another step back and forces herself to relax her face. “What else can you tell about me just from looking?”

He lowers his sword. “That you are angry,” he says thoughtfully. “Most of the time, you disguise it well, but then it bursts from you uncontrolled. I think you’d kill a thousand Danes if you could. It is not just that you wish to protect others, you burn for vengeance as well.”

“Don’t you?”

“I desire vengeance on a few Danes in particular. Not all of them. It is you women who are a bloodthirsty lot.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Can you blame us if we are?”

He studies her for a moment. “No.”

No doubt he is remembering that terrible night in Wintanceaster, as she is. She wonders—but does not dare ask—if not for Iseult, would he and Leofric have chosen to intervene, or would they have been content to sit back and watch? She does not want to know the answer; these are the types of questions that lead to madness. At any rate, it is useless to speculate now. The Danes who did it are in Hell. She would kill them again if she could, but once will have to suffice.

“Did you come to train me in swordskill, Lord, or only to remark upon my personality?” she asks lightly.

He shrugs, perhaps relieved that she does not intend to carry this conversation further. “You were the one who asked, not I.”

She lifts her sword and adjusts her stance in answer, this time careful to control her face and keep her body relaxed. This time, she vows she will not give herself away so easily. She lunges forward.

This is the third lesson: know your enemy. Make sure you see him before he sees you. It is a lesson that Uhtred himself forgets some weeks later when Guthred sells him and Halig into slavery. She does not see him again for a long time.

* * *

Hild is always the one left to pick up the pieces. It is she who wraps Iseult’s broken body in linen and helps lift her onto the pyre, it is she who digs the grave for Halig and murmurs the prayers for the dead. It is she who sponges the bloody wounds on Uhtred’s back and tries to make him whole again.

“You are a healer,” Iseult told her in the days when they were exiled to the marshlands, perhaps never to return. She had protested: she knew her prayers, and how to cook and sew and keep the accounts in order, and how to kill a man. Healing she knew nothing of.

Iseult shook her head. “You give comfort and solace, even to strangers, and you do so freely, without being asked. That is how I know. But Hild,” she said, “who gives you comfort? Who heals you?”

“God,” she said without thinking. “God brings me comfort.”

Her shoulders had begun to shake and she could sense something bubbling up inside of her and threatening to spill over. Iseult put a hand on her arm and she pulled away, unable to meet her eyes. _God did not abandon me. But He allowed my suffering._

“Don’t go that way,” she heard Iseult saying from somewhere far away. “Hild, come back.”

So she came back: wailing in Iseult’s arms like a lost child, her entire body heaving with sobs until she could hardly breathe. She could sense eyes on her, Leofric and Uhtred and even the king himself watching with alarm until at last Iseult told them to leave. She wept until she could weep no more, and when she was finished, Iseult held her hand and told her she would be there for however long she needed.

But that was not true—she died and left her to grieve alone, to put herself back together piece by piece. And she has: she put on mail and strapped her sword to her side and remade herself into a warrior, but she had not reckoned how the weight would grow heavier with every passing day. If Iseult were here, Hild thinks she would ask her if she took up swordskill to protect those she loves or to cloak herself in armor so she could not be hurt anymore. Iseult would ask: _what would make you whole?_

She does not know—until at last, sitting in the field with Uhtred, she finally begins to see the outline of it, a glimpse of what could be. That night, she dreams again of Iseult shrouded in darkness. “Come back,” she calls out, and to her surprise, Iseult turns around. She sits by the fire with her and gazes into the flames. “In my dreams,” she tells Iseult, “you always walk away.”

Iseult smiles. “In my dreams, we survived.”

When she wakes, she knows the answer.

This is the fourth and final lesson: to oil your armor, sheath your sword, and then place them in a chest and close the lid; to build nunneries on what used to be battlefields; to break up the soil where blood once ran and plant rows of crops and fields of flowers; to open your eyes in the morning and know that God is good.

Alfred sends her a letter of congratulations after the construction is complete. He asks if she has at last found peace— _for I believe no one is more deserving than you, Abbess Hild._

Down the hallway, she can hear the laughter of the women hauling in the new pews for the chapel. In the kitchens, they are singing as they boil water and chop fresh-caught fish for stew; in the main hall, they are reciting prayers as they sew habits; out in the orchards, they are harvesting apples for cider, baskets overflowing with fruit. Soon, she will set aside her quill and her papers. She will lay down all her burdens. She will go outside to join her sisters and pick apples until the sun goes down, and she will smile and think to herself, _how fortunate we are, how blessed._


End file.
